Over the centuries, an extensive vocabulary has grown up to describe various kinds of meads; modern mead makers often describe their products using terms like [[metheglin]], [[melomel]], [[petillant]], and [[hydromel]]. These terms may be confusing or intimidating to the beginning mead maker, but each of them has a fairly simple meaning and describes one aspect of a mead's character. If you prefer, you can use simpler language to describe mead. For example, a '''petillant hydromel melomel''' can also be described as a '''mildly carbonated''' ("pellicant") '''low-alcohol''' ("hydromel") '''fruit mead''' ("melomel"). Both kinds of terms will probably be encountered in this wiki.

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Over the centuries, an extensive vocabulary has grown up to describe various kinds of meads; modern mead makers often describe their products using terms like [[metheglin]], [[melomel]], [[petillant]], and [[hydromel]]. These terms may be confusing or intimidating to the beginning mead maker, but each of them has a fairly simple meaning and describes one aspect of a mead's character. If you prefer, you can use simpler language to describe mead. For example, a '''petillant hydromel melomel''' can also be described as a '''mildly carbonated''' ("petillant") '''low-alcohol''' ("hydromel") '''fruit mead''' ("melomel"). Both kinds of terms will probably be encountered in this wiki.

==Mead ingredients==

==Mead ingredients==

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;[[Hydromel]]: Low alcohol mead, either brewed to a low [[original gravity]] or blended with water.

;[[Hydromel]]: Low alcohol mead, either brewed to a low [[original gravity]] or blended with water.

Latest revision as of 05:10, 17 June 2010

While its basic ingredients are simple, the possibilities of mead are at least as great as beer or wine, thanks to the longstanding tradition of adding extra ingredients to mead. Mead is traditionally divided into styles based on the ingredients used (both extra ingredients like herbs and spices and basic ingredients like honey); the degree of sweetness; the alcoholic strength of the mead, and the degree of carbonation used.

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Describing mead styles

Because good mead can be made with any combination of sweetness, carbonation, ingredients, and strength, it is harder to define a "style" of mead than it is to define a beer style or wine style. Simply defining a mead by the ingredients used, as is done in the BJCP style guidelines used in most home meadmaking competitions, ignores many other aspects of a mead's character and does little to ensure that similar meads are grouped together. In order to fully describe any given mead style, therefore, it will probably be necessary to define it as falling into more than one "style"; one for ingredients, one for carbonation, and so on.

Mead terminology

Over the centuries, an extensive vocabulary has grown up to describe various kinds of meads; modern mead makers often describe their products using terms like metheglin, melomel, petillant, and hydromel. These terms may be confusing or intimidating to the beginning mead maker, but each of them has a fairly simple meaning and describes one aspect of a mead's character. If you prefer, you can use simpler language to describe mead. For example, a petillant hydromel melomel can also be described as a mildly carbonated ("petillant") low-alcohol ("hydromel") fruit mead ("melomel"). Both kinds of terms will probably be encountered in this wiki.

Mead ingredients

One common way of defining mead styles is by the ingredients used. A variety of terms are used to describe meads made simply with honey and with addded ingredients like fruit, herbs and spices. The most commonly encountered terms are:

Mead strength

A number of terms are used to describe the alcoholic strength of mead, which is as varied as that of wine. The most important terms are those used by the BJCP style guidelines used in most mead competitions: